The present embodiments relate to phantoms for medical imaging. Medical imaging devices, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), ultrasound, fluoroscopy, positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), or x-ray, use phantoms to calibrate or for scientific investigation. The phantom provides known characteristics used as a ground truth to interpret scan results from the medical imaging system. This ground truth for comparison with imaging results may be particularly important for quantitative measuring with the medical imaging system, investigation of resolution of the medical imaging system, or to deal with imaging artifacts linked to specific densities or shapes.
The phantoms contain different materials with different densities, shapes, and/or thickness for measuring and comparing with scan results. For example, a phantom is gel with a suspended metal sphere or tube. Simple geometric structures of various sizes and/or densities suspended in other material may be easy to manufacture, so most phantoms have these simple structures. The same design may be used for many different medical imaging systems. However, the simplicity of design and/or limited variety in the available phantoms may limit the use of the phantoms. Designing more complex phantoms for a specific or limited use purpose may be overly costly.